Jean Michel Moreau

Paris, 1741-1814

Jean-Michel Moreau (26 March 1741 – 30 November 1814), also called Moreau le Jeune (“the younger”), was a French draughtsman, illustrator and engraver.

Moreau le Jeune, as he is usually called, was born in Paris. He was the pupil of the painter Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain who accompanied his master to St Petersburg in 1758 when Le Lorrain went to be the first director of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts established the previous year, where Moreau briefly taught drawing before returning to Paris in 1759, after Le Lorrain’s unexpected death.

He worked for the engraver Jacques-Philippe Lebas, producing reproductive drawings of contemporary paintings and those of Old Masters for engravers to work from and learning etching During the 1760s he also provided drawings to be engraved for the Recueil d’antiquités of the comte de Caylus, who kept a benevolent watch over him. For Diderot and Alembert’s Encyclopédie he provided pen and wash drawings for the engravers, illustrating artisanal processes. As an engraver he collaborated with François Boucher, Hubert Gravelot and others on illustrations for an edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

In 1770...